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DALEVILLE – It's the kind of online publicity that money can't buy — and no business would want to.

In less than a week, a cellphone video shot at the Shell gas station and convenience store near Interstate 69 in Daleville has been viewed online nearly 1.5 million times and left viewers with the impression that a manager at the store threw two homeless people — military veterans — off the store's property.

"To me, this was wrong," Summer Hutchison can be heard saying in the video she shot and posted online. Hutchison confronted a store employee on Nov. 13. Hutchison said the couple and their dog just needed a place to get warm.

"I just need to know, is that how your company runs?" she asks the surprised store employee, who had come out to empty a garbage can.

But the company that owns the station told The Star Press that the incident at the heart of the viral video didn't take place — at least not as it was portrayed. Employees at the station have received death threats, a company official said.

And Hutchison, who posted the video on Nov. 14, has since added to her online posting to note that she was "used" and "scammed" by the couple, for whom she bought food and other supplies before driving them to Fort Wayne.

It's a dramatic example of the power of the Internet to call attention to wrongs but also heap scorn on people who might not deserve it.

"It's an unfortunate misunderstanding," Heather Meckes of Herdrich Petroleum of Rushville, owner of the Daleville Shell station, told The Star Press. "But the events in this video are dramatized and for the most part untrue. We're really feeling the effects of it, with threats of being shot and blown up."

'They did nothing wrong'

“The manager literally yelled 'shoo' to them and made them leave.”

Summer Hutchison

The "terrible situation" began, as Hutchison said in her initial online posting, on Nov. 13, when she and her teenage son were at the Shell station. Employees "yelled at a homeless veteran, his wife and his dog for sitting on their sidewalk to drink a cup of coffee that they had just scrapped pennies for.

"The manager literally yelled 'shoo' to them and made them leave," Hutchison posted under the video she shot after the initial events at the station.

"I witnessed the manager yelling at them outside. They did nothing wrong. They (were) not panhandling or bothering anyone."

By the time Hutchison returned to record her confrontation with the store employee, she had given the couple and their dog a ride to Fort Wayne, bought them food and paid for a night in a motel for them after they said they would have to sleep under a highway overpass. The couple, she said, were trying to make it to Michigan, where a job awaited.

The Star Press sent Hutchison a message on Facebook on Tuesday to ask her about the video and her comments. She had not responded by Wednesday afternoon.

Hutchison did, however, post a lengthy update to her initial message and video, which had by that time wracked up 1.48 million views online.

'This man scammed me'

"I got used and he is on the run from the Army," Hutchison wrote, in all capital letters, in an "update" Wednesday to her original online post. She said the "homeless veteran's" brother had contacted her and said the man she helped "ran when he was called on to deploy" and had been on the road for years.

“But this man scammed me and took from me and my kids.”

Summer Hutchison

Although she continued to maintain the store employee was "wrong and I stand by that," Hutchison wrote, "But this man scammed me and took from me and my kids." She said she wanted to sue the couple for claiming "veteran status to scam and steal from innocent people like myself who tried to do a good deed."

Meckes of Herdrich Petroleum — which owns 17 convenience store/gas stations — indicated relief that Hutchison had updated her story. Even before the update, Meckes told The Star Press her company contributes to causes that help veterans and the homeless, although she noted that, in this case, the company had no idea if the couple at the heart of the controversy were either homeless or veterans.

The company was fairly certain from early on that the incident hadn't played out like it was portrayed, with store employees "laughing and yelling" at the couple before telling them to leave a sidewalk outside.

A review of store security camera videos indicated "our manager was out the door less than 10 seconds and told them to move along," Meckes said.

Store employees routinely try to discourage loitering in the parking lot because of "drug interactions and panhandling."

"We have to keep our customers safe," Meckes added.

'Has not happened to us before'

Meckes said the employee in the video had received death threats.

"It's been tough on our employees," she said. "They're getting threats at the store and on the phone. The phone is ringing off the hook."

Videos like the one shot at the Daleville Shell station, when posted online and shared on social media like Facebook, can quickly snowball.

"PLEASE post this and let's track down where this store/gas station is so that it can be exposed and boycotted!" one man wrote when he shared Hutchison's video to a Facebook page for veterans.

"It's unfortunate," Meckes said about the viral video. "It has not happened to us before."

Herdrich posted a comment on the Shell station's Facebook page but she was afraid that "would just make it worse."

"It has reached over a million views from what we know," Meckes said. "A lot of that is outside the local area. Local customers who know that store and know our cashiers don't believe that could happen."

Contact Keith Roysdon at 765-213-5828 and follow him on Twitter: @keithroysdon